The Warren Buffett investment philosophy calls for a long-term investment horizon, where a five year holding period, or even longer, would fit right into the strategy. How would such a strategy have worked out for an investment into Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F)? Today, we examine the outcome of a five year investment into the stock back in 2015.

F 5-Year Return Details

Start date:

05/12/2015

$10,00005/12/2015

$4,40905/11/2020

End date:

05/11/2020

Start price/share:

$15.56

End price/share:

$5.12

Starting shares:

642.67

Ending shares:

861.27

Dividends reinvested/share:

$3.28

Total return:

-55.90%

Average annual return:

-15.10%

Starting investment:

$10,000.00

Ending investment:

$4,409.04

The above analysis shows the five year investment result worked out poorly, with an annualized rate of return of -15.10%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $4,409.04 today (as of 05/11/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of -55.90% (something to think about: how might F shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Always an important consideration with a dividend-paying company is: should we reinvest our dividends?Over the past 5 years, Ford Motor Co. has paid $3.28/share in dividends. For the above analysis, we assume that the investor reinvests dividends into new shares of stock (for the above calculations, the reinvestment is performed using closing price on ex-div date for that dividend).

Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of .6/share, we calculate that F has a current yield of approximately 11.72%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of .6 against the original $15.56/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 75.32%.

Here’s one more great investment quote before you go:“Thousands of experts study overbought indicators, head-and-shoulder patterns, put-call ratios, the Fed’s policy on money supplyâ€¦and they can’t predict markets with any useful consistency, any more than the gizzard squeezers could tell the Roman emperors when the Huns would attack.” — Peter Lynch